Iconography

Iconography refers to the meaning or symbolism of a work of art. It includes a branch of art history that studies identification, classification, description, and interpretations of the content of images: the subjects depicted, symbols, themes, composition, and other elements specific to artistic style. Iconography may also refer to the artist’s use of imagery in a particular work and the identification of sources (literary or visual) used. Iconography is also concerned with analyzing certain pictorial themes, especially their development, traditions, and content through the ages. A secondary meaning applies to the production of religious images, also called "icons" in the Byzantine and Orthodox Christian tradition. The term is also used in many academic fields other than art history, such as semiotics, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, or media studies, broadly referring to the content of images, the typical depiction in images of a subject, and related senses.

Background

The term iconography comes from the Greek eikonographia, meaning sketch or description (from eikōn, likeness, and graphia, writing). The earliest iconographical studies belong to the sixteenth century, when catalogs of emblems and symbols were collected from antique literature, translated into pictorial terms, and published for the use of artists. The most famous of these works was Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593). Early Western writers who paid special attention to the content of images include Giorgio Vasari, considered the father of art history; Gian Pietro Bellori, a seventeenth-century biographer of artists of his own time; and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who wrote an influential study of amor in 1796. Extensive iconographical study did not begin in Europe until the eighteenth century, when iconography accompanied archaeology in classifying subjects and motifs present in ancient monuments. As an academic discipline, iconography developed in the nineteenth century in the works of scholars such as Adolphe Napoleon Didron, Anton Heinrich Springer, and Émile Mâle, all specialists in Christian religious art, which was the main focus of study in this period. In early twentieth-century Germany, Aby Warburg and his followers, Fritz Saxl and Erwin Panofsky, elaborated the practice of iconography. Panofsky codified an influential approach to iconography in his 1939 Studies in Iconology, wherein he also included a definition of the discipline. His works attracted a wide audience and influenced Frederick Hart and Meyer Schapiro, who contributed to the development of the discipline in the United States. During the 1940s, Richard Krautheimer, a specialist on early medieval churches, extended iconographical analysis to architectural forms. In the second half of the twentieth century, technological advances allowed the development of huge collections of images, with an iconographic arrangement or index. A highly complex way of classifying the content of images, referred to as the Iconclass system, was developed in the Netherlands as a standard classification for recording collections, with the idea of assembling huge databases that will allow the retrieval of images featuring particular details, subjects, or other common factors.

Overview

The use of iconographic symbols in art began around 3000 BCE, when the Neolithic civilizations of the Middle East used nonhuman or animal figures to represent their gods. In ancient Greece and Rome, gods and emperors were associated with specific representations (e.g., at Rome, during the Principate, the eagle symbolized the absolute and autocratic power of the emperor). In addition, early Romans perfected the use of secular allegorical symbols (e.g., a large woman surrounded by grapes and sheaves of wheat would be easily recognized as a representation of abundance). Early Christian art during the period of Roman persecution was highly discreet, and innocuous objects like the fish and the dove were used to symbolize Christ and the Holy Spirit. Later, iconographic symbols proliferated in Christian art, and many of the saints become associated with specific objects, often symbols of their martyrdom (e.g., St. Peter with two keys). Medieval thought reorganized the major symbolic codes of antiquity into a new religious and theological conception of the world, imposing a clear dichotomy between good and evil and according to which the principal figures of the Christian pantheon were assigned their proper place (Christ, the Virgin, the angels, and the saints vs. the devil and his emissaries).

The Renaissance saw a revival of the classic culture brought about by the works of the humanists and their disseminations via the newly discovered printing press. These texts restored to the West ancient cultural traditions; the symbolic images were influenced not only by the myths of Greco-Roman antiquity but also by philosophy and esoteric traditions. Through the eighteenth century, allegorical paintings were especially popular, as artists created complicated symbolic schemes to illustrate such themes as the vanity of human existence. Objects such as jewels, coins, and musical instruments personified the vain pleasures of life, while hourglasses, skulls, and candles were suggestions of death. The visionary painting of the late eighteenth century, the culture of Romanticism, and nineteenth-century Symbolism brought figures and meanings drawn from imagination and subconscious. Nineteenth-century iconography was also concerned with the occurrence and significance of religious symbolism in Christian art.

In the twentieth century, investigation of Christian iconography continued, but the secular and classical iconography of European art was also explored, as was the iconographic aspects of Eastern religious art. In the modern period, much art has become so highly individualistic that the use of widely understood iconographic objects has disappeared. The exceptions are Dadaism and Pop Art that feature images of everyday objects (e.g., soup cans, photographs, and comic-book figures) that have become genuine iconographic symbols reflecting modern culture.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, art historical studies have shifted from a concentration on attribution, form, and style to a concern with the context of a work of art and with the wider ramifications of its subject matter. Because of these changes, the themes depicted in works of arts are studied now in relation to such subjects as gender and sexuality, politics and power, ceremony and ritual, etc., adding new insights to old iconographic usages.

Bibliography

Battistini, M. Symbols and Allegories in Art. Los Angeles: Getty, 2005. Print.

Doniger, W., ed. Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006. eBook.

Lefevre, W., J. Renn, and U. Schoepflin., eds. The Power of Images in Early Modern Sciences. N.p.: Birkhäuser, 2012. Print.

Levine, Emily J. Dreamland of Humanists: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky, and the Hamburg School. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2015. Print.

Mitchell, W. J. Thomas. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: U of Chicago U, 2013. Print.

Panofsky, E. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. Boulder: Westview, 1939. Print.

Roberts, Helene E. Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. Hoboken: Routledge, 2013. eBook.

Shepard, T., and A. Leonard, eds. The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture. New York: Routledge, 2014. eBook.

Stevens, A. Ariadne’s Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998. Print.

Van Straten, R. An Introduction to Iconography: Symbols, Allusions and Meaning in the Visual Arts (Documenting the Image). Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1994. Print.